Ghost Ships
by moodiful819
Summary: [3/6] Long after the battle, she can still feel it loom inside her. Feels the cobwebs it leaves on her bones, feels the sedentary beat of her heart even as dawn blazes hot in her face through the porthole. The feeling paralyzes her, weighs her down. It's as if her chest were at the bottom of the sea. Trapped by a feeling without a name. [Kakasaku]


Thank you once again to all the wonderful comments on the last installment. This is part 3 of the Mermaid AU. This installment ended up being too long, so I cut it in half. What you're reading now is the first movement of the original idea. Until next time, and happy new year!

 **TW: Gore, violence.**

* * *

The water hits her like a wall.

The fall is maybe only twenty, thirty feet, but the force and the shock are enough to have her reflexively swallowing, reflexively spluttering. Despite the searing sun overhead, she hits the water cold.

Lungs burning, she surfaces, chokes, and watches as another of her ship's cannonballs sinks itself into the old Will of Fire ship with a thunderous boom. In the old days, it had been a grand sight. With its large masts, billowing sails, and signature bold red stripe painted around its hull, there wasn't a sailor worth their salt who hadn't heard of the boat. But gutted by flames and cannonballs, it is a sorry sight. It would probably break old Sarutobi's heart to see it like this, but the old man has long been dead and she doubts he'd care for his ship after 10 years with his murderers.

Her reverie is cut short by a loud cracking sound that splinters the air like a shot of lightning. Clutching tight to her piece of driftwood, Sakura scans the surface for the source, squinting against the glare of the sun on the water. In the distance, she catches sight of Kakashi's dorsal fin above the waves. Fire blazes around her as if the world is ending. In a way, she supposes it is as she watches the mast of the ship light up like a beacon, and the irony is not lost on her as she watches the Will of Fire begin to sink into the sea.

The blast of another cannon strikes her from her daydream. The Will of Fire is already a ruin, but another one splits into the burning hull like a hammer through a window, accelerating its disappearance under the waves, and Sakura feels a reprimand welling in her throat. Tenten might be one of the best armory technicians on the seven seas in a hundred years, but even that doesn't stop her from landing herself in hot water. Especially when she's already been warned about wasting ammo before.

But she has to get back on board before the lecturing can begin, and a painful twinge in her shoulder makes that a tall order. Mercifully though, the waves have not carried her too far away from her ship. A rope ladder dangles tantalizingly down the side, and she kicks her bit of wreckage towards home, surveying the damage as she goes. It's not as bad as she would have expected. Aside from two holes on the deck and a puncture high on the port side of the ship, the damage is largely cosmetic and heartened by the realization, Sakura paddles through the wood and carnage with the semblance of a smile.

She is mere minutes away from her old junker. Pushing through a gap between two floating corpses, she is close enough to see the shadowed outlines of her crew, close enough to hear the ship's bones creak at their familiar volume. She's even close enough to hear the noise of her crew as Naruto shouts commands in her absence when suddenly his voice shoots off the ship at her.

"Sakura, watch out!"

By the time she follows his pointed finger to look behind her, he is already upon her. Water drains off of him, pouring down his form. For a second, she thinks a sea god has come to claim her and the sound of the thick watery curtain fills her ears and lungs with fear.

But the curtain abates, drops off into a more manageable trickle, and she recognizes the wretch before her as none other than the singed, bushy figure of Ishiguro, her defeated enemy. A mere mortal. Nothing more, and she inwardly sighs her relief…

Instantly she catches her mistake, but it is too late. His hands are already around her throat and she can already feel the press of his weight onto her body.

 **"YOU FUCKING BITCH, I'LL KILL YOU!"** he roars and tips them both into the water, into the murky silence of the depths.

* * *

She watches as they drift down the water column. It's dark. Not dark enough to be blinding, but down enough for the light streaming down from the surface to seem far. She catches bubbles trailing up towards the surface. Her bubbles, and while she knows she shouldn't be thinking like this, should be panicking more, her mind cannot help but wander to the beauty of their surroundings. The silence strikes her. The serenity is a sharp contrast to the previous tumult, to the bombastic chaos of the surface.

But she knows she is lying to herself. That the world underwater is not this beautiful, that there are corpses floating in these waters that she is choosing to ignore. She is afraid of dying and merely too afraid to face it.

The thought of death is what brings it all back into focus. The process is so quick, so sudden that she can feel what little breath she still has in her lungs lurch in her chest. It makes everything else that follows feel slower. Her struggle, their slow descent into the darkness feels as if it were a slug's crawl.

But it could also be her clothing, she knows, and curses the weight of her captain's coat. She has half a mind to shrug out of heavy, cumbersome deathtrap, but her hands are too busy trying to dislodge the ones gripping her throat. Desperate to get away, she tries to kick him in the gut, but her muscles are weakening from the lack of oxygen and the bump of her boot in his stomach does nothing but draw his grin wider. All she can do is sink her nails into his hands, stare into the eyes of a man who has nothing left to lose, and hope.

Her head begins to pound and fuzz at the same time. She doesn't know if it's the depth or the lack of oxygen. All she knows is that her body's insistent desire for her life to flash before her eyes is getting annoying and that she's surprisingly lucid for someone who is dying. She has always wondered what her last thoughts would be, and she comfortingly finds it is of her ship and crew. She knows that she has nothing to worry about. The first few months will be rough, but she knows Naruto will make a great ship captain. She just hopes that he doesn't try to come in after her, and that if her bloated, disfigured body does ever come up to the surface, she hopes it will be far away from her ship.

She begins to fade. She can feel it in the dimming light and the drifting lightness that settles over her body. Even her heartbeat begins to echo longer in between beats when she catches movement out of the corner of her eye. It's her only warning as blood and bubbles stream into her face. Her mind is slow to recognize what her body notices in a beat: Ishiguro has let her go.

Instantly, she awakens to herself. Her acuity returns with a knife-like precision sharpness honed only by adrenaline and brushes with death and she tries to pick out clues through the veil of bubbles in a red haze. Tries to figure out what has just happened because Ishiguro would never let her go on his own…

It is over in a flash. Once again, she surfaces above the waves, chest burning and desperate for breath. The rowboat from her ship scoops her out and hands her aboard the main ship to a waiting, worrying Naruto. Uncharacteristically, she does not protest as he frets and fusses over her like a mother hen, but they all chalk it up to her harrowing experience and keep a respectful distance and a watchful eye as they sit her on deck against the sturdy mast. She is dimly aware of the action around her, but does not acknowledge it, too busy trying to pick apart the picture in her head.

It was there for only a fraction of a second. It happened so fast that Sakura is still unsure whether she has imagined it or not. But she has never in all her years imagined something so gruesome and her eyes burn in the way only truth does.

She only has to close her eyes. That is all it takes to drag her back under the water again, floating weightlessly in the water column as Kakashi continues his punishing bite into the juncture of Ishiguro's neck and shoulder. It is an impressive sight. Ishiguro had been seemingly unbreakable given the stoutness of his body, but Sakura knows the rumors that sharks accelerate before attacking their prey and it seemed that Kakashi is no different. Her silver-haired companion had charged Ishiguro so forcefully that his neck had nearly dislocated on impact, not to mention the bones that splinter through the burly man's skin under Kakashi's grip.

That force keeps them going it seemed because Kakashi does not stop once he's sunk his jaws into Ishiguro. Does not seem capable of stopping, does not seem to want to stop as his tail continues to beat powerfully in the surf. He is unrecognizable in his animosity. Even his eyes are different, as if the creature she had saved and the creature that saves her are two different entities. She is tempted to think they are, but she recalls a moment before they pass each other.

As he races by, there is a fraction of a second where they catch each other's gazes and suddenly her Kakashi is back, staring into her wide, fearful eyes. For a fraction of a second, there is recognition. For a second, there is guilt and shame.

And then, clutching his quarry, he is gone. She picks up a tension that strings the length of his lithe body as he moves away. He does not look back.

Hours later, as she lies in her bed, she can still trace the image of his figure disappearing into the darkness, can still see the blood trail that lingers behind him as Ishiguro's head lulls and bobs in their wake, can still see the shame that burns in his eyes. Staring up into the darkness of her cabin, it haunts her in ways she cannot name.

Careful of her injured arm, she turns on her side and stares at the wall. Her candle has long burnt out. The crew has long since gone to bed. She knows she should join them, but she cannot sleep. Try as she might, the image will not let her go.


End file.
